


Questions and Answers

by JPLabguru



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: #DrunkenKissesChallenge Fest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7248790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JPLabguru/pseuds/JPLabguru





	Questions and Answers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dedicated to @nighthawkms aka Jay Auris aka @BrianZeeMD and my partner in all things Preller](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Dedicated+to+%40nighthawkms+aka+Jay+Auris+aka+%40BrianZeeMD+and+my+partner+in+all+things+Preller).



June 18, 2009  
Cal-Barrel Road

Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller thought they had seen some bad things in the two years they’d been working together, but what had awaited them that morning inside a decrepit shack made both of them vomit. Even Jack, stoic Jack, decliner of Vick’s salve to cover the sweetly rotten stench of death, and peppermints to help settle stomachs, turned away multiple times from the horror, ostensibly to scan the surroundings for clues.

“Welcome to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, gentlemen,” Jack had muttered grimly. He was ashen underneath his newly-grown goatee, Jimmy noted, despite the bravado. Jack nodded toward the cluster of local law enforcement gathered like crows at the edge of the pathway and said, “Now go do the voodoo that you do. I’ll keep them away.”

Ordinarily, their team was larger. Katz was hung up in a court case, testifying in Atlanta, and their usual assistant, Mike Lee, was home with the flu, so this particular clusterfuck of a crime scene was all Jimmy and Brian’s to process.

Jimmy glanced at Brian. Brian gestured cryptically and the two men geared up and retrieved their equipment, then went about the slow and requisitely tedious processes of recording the pathway to the shack. Jimmy mumbled the names of the various plants before them, his way of coping on the job with stress. In his head, he calculated the number of hours since his last drink and how long before he could open the bottle tucked inside his luggage. Brian muttered and cursed the stomping boots that had thoroughly contaminated the crime scene.  
They moved slowly, inch by inch, falling into their familiar routine. Hidden deep in the tangle of redwoods and ferns off Cal-Barrel Road, tucked away from the prying eyes and ears of the sheriffs behind them, they engaged in another one of their coping mechanisms, that of “inappropriate sexual banter” as the FBI Code of Conduct might call it. To Jimmy and Brian, a day wasn’t a day if they hadn’t made such remarks to one another. Jimmy only wished that one of them had the balls to make good on them.  
\----------------------------------------------------------

 

June 20, 2009  
8:46 p.m.  
Somewhere along the beach outside a small town in Northern California

Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller sat, listening to the waves crash and shush against the sand. June in northern California was a completely different thing here; forty-nine damp degrees was freezing compared to the swelter of Quantico or Bethesda and they huddled close together for warmth, but mostly from habit.

“Stop bogarting the bottle, Zeller,” Jimmy mumbled, extending his hand. “Give it.”

Brian ignored him, instead taking a long pull from the bottle before handing it back. He grinned as he did, then leaned back dramatically.

“’Bogarting’? What year are you living in, Jim?” he cackled. Oh, how he loved spinning Jim up, trying to get a rise out of him, especially after a day like they’d had. Brian worried about Jimmy sometimes, especially after really awful cases like this. To be honest, he worried about Jimmy all the time. To be even more honest with himself, he cared more about Jimmy in ways that co-workers usually don’t. His grin faltered a bit at that thought, and he cleared his throat.

“1978. Now shut up and let me drink this,” Jimmy responded. He felt Brian go silent, rather than hear it. Brian would do that, go from joking around to introspective suddenly, and then there would be some kind of silent tug between them. Jimmy rubbed the bottle gently against his lips as he thought about Brian; he wondered what kissing Brian would feel like. Would they fit together as easily as they do with work? Would their lips and tongues slide and touch as he imagined they would? Or would they manage to bang their noses together and make their teeth click and fuck up what they had at work?

Jimmy lifted the bottle and drank what was left.

They rarely talked about a case right after. Not when they were exhausted, not when death had crawled into every orifice and soaked into every pore. Not when being alive seemed obscene and death the more natural state of being.  
Instead, they let the second pint of whiskey work its magic, warming and loosening their tightly-wound minds. The loud silence of nature captivated them for the moment and they sat together, together and yet apart inside their own minds. Jimmy felt Brian move closer, felt that mental tug from the other man.

“Hey, Jim?” 

Jimmy turned, and the plaintive expression on the man’s face made his heart ache. He knew this expression well. Heart ache and need, all wrapped up into one neat package. Jimmy slipped his arm around Brian’s shoulders.

“Hmm?”

“Do you–“ Brian began, but for what was probably the first time in his life, his glib, sassy, snark tongue wouldn’t work. His brain, on the other hand, screamed the questions he wanted to ask, had been wanting to ask for the past six months: Do you know how much I care about you? Do you know how much I worry about you? Do you know how much I want you? Instead, he continued to look at Jimmy, almost pleading with him to hear his thoughts.

And apparently Jimmy did.

“Yes,” he answered. Jimmy hesitated briefly, figuring the worst that could happen was a punch in the face; it’d happened in the past. ‘I can blame it on the case and booze, if it comes to that,’ he thought.

Jimmy’s heart pounded as he leaned forward, and seemed to stop as he kissed Brian. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, he knows how to kiss’ Jimmy thought, and they kissed; their lips and tongues and teeth touched and teased and explored as though this was the thousandth kiss, not the first one. 

Some moments later, maybe one minute, perhaps five, they broke off the kiss, suddenly conscious of being in public, despite the fact that the sun had set, despite the fact that no one was around. Life in a bureaucracy made them ever-aware of eyes and ears. Security cameras know no friends; they don’t look the other way.

“Did that answer your question?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah.” He stood abruptly, then held out both hands to hoist Jimmy up. “I’ve got a few more, though.”

They bumped chests lightly when Jimmy stood up, and immediately embraced again.

“Oh, yeah? Well, let me endeavor to answer each and every one,” Jimmy replied.

It took all night, and they only got halfway finished with Brian's list.

~~END~~


End file.
